Waingro

"I'm hearing talk of..." "A lot of good people are saying..." "It's been said that..." I was hoping this mealy-mouthed bullshít had said farewell, but it's clearly parasitic. So, go on, where did you hear about mandatory booster shots, and from whom?

United new-hires can hold 777 FO. Mid-summer hires from this year can hold 787. I expect they'll sit reserve for years though, and United's reserve rules aren't great. Worse for global reserve (int'l has a different set of rules, mainly they can fly you into your days off, up to 6 total days a month). United new-hires can (right now) hold a NB line in the junior bases before the finish IOE. So yeah, lots of good reasons to stay NB. First year pay is all the same, and nobody on the WB is breaking reserve guarantee right now, so you'd make more money on NB. Lots of options for people though.

11F. I'm surprised it worked then for him, but I was there and saw it happen. Worth pushing the button to see if it works!

A friend of mine was in a similar situation. Not that he came into money, only that he wanted to separate and had three years of bonus left. He was otherwise eligible and clear of all other ADSCs. He went on vMPF, and applied for separation. It got approved and he just outprocessed. Not long after his terminal leave was finished, he was contacted to pay back the unearned portions of his bonus. He wrote a check and that was the last he ever dealt with the USAF. So maybe try that route. Try and separate, if it clears AFPC and you come back eligible, then you just solved your own problem without having to receive scrutiny from higher levels of leadership.

Looks like the recall will fail overwhelmingly. Definitely a tale of two Californias. Separately, it's an interesting test run to see if the GOP tactic of sowing uncertainty and disinformation about election integrity, as a hedge against a potential loss, is viable. Sad to see the future of our democracy wagered like this.

That was already agreed upon with the last administration, and it looks as though that will be our foreign policy going forward as well. So, about that fast.

Oh, I'm not arguing this was well executed. It's just that I'm more surprised that people are coming out of the woodwork to feign horror about this, when they were just fine with us freeing the leader of the Taliban and then inviting them to Camp David for cookies. We more or less agreed to hand the country over - poorly executed, yes, but where was the pearl clutching when we set this in motion well over a year ago?

Weird how? When we freed the leader of the Taliban, then invited them to Camp David to discuss the transfer, you were expecting some other outcome? Without dumping tens of thousands back into Afghanistan, to augment the 2,500 we started the year with, I don't see that this was going to end any other way.

For 19+ years the Taliban have claimed civilian casualties for virtually every strike. Interesting to see that their propaganda arm now has Americans doing it for them.

Spoiler alert: ten-minute production, filmed in an abandoned school bus in the woods, where he verbally resigns his commission and talks about all the shít he’s seen in the corps. And to Venmo his wife money. And then that he needs philanthropist support to do what he’s about to do next. Which he later says is to “bring the whole fuçking system down.” And then “we’re just getting started.” Pretty cringey, overall.

"Forcibly injected against their consent?" You know it's an all-volunteer force, right?

Careful, bringing up the fact that zero schools have ever espoused CRT is just one step away from asking them to define it! I'm pretty sure the Tucker talking points don't go that deep.

Agreed, it doesn't belong. But I doubt Crenshaw or Cotton could accurately describe what CRT actually is. And it isn't in our military, or K-12 curriculum anywhere. This is a culture war Boogeyman with as much factual basis behind it as razor blades in Halloween candy, or the "War on Christmas." Media personalities everywhere are giving airtime to politicians trying to build capital based on CRT fear.

I'm genuinely curious, what are the CBP employees doing differently today than they were doing six months ago, that is driving this? I'll have to assume that these accounts are true and correct. So what executive-branch policies are resulting in migrants streaming over the border and then boarding airplanes to other states?

Like Hoss said, very expensive for what you get. But if you sign up for the kid's plan it's literally the same benefit (your spouse is the executor so it goes to him/her either way) for like $15 a month instead. Works until your youngest is 18 or 23 if in college. That's the only way I found that it makes any sense at all to do it.

What's fun is that to retire it's only 4 months required, and you get 20 days of permissive in conjunction with retirement. With 60+ days of terminal leave, you can be doing your final out just 6 weeks after dropping papers.

Right-to-work means that you can't be compelled to join a union or pay union dues. Did you mean at-will employment?

The majority of non-rated career fields will have O-4s as commanders. Some, like SFS and MX, they'll get multiple command tours. Which is also why it's dangerous to go up for O-5 IPZ from a line job, and not school/staff - most of your competition are sitting squadron commanders. At least under the old system.

Yeah, that's problematic. This seems like a solution in need of a problem. I think the mechanism for addressing bad judgement in that regard already exists. Case in point, I had an airman make a blatantly racist comment regarding a former POTUS on a public and widely viewed Facebook page. CMSAF personally found it, it went at the speed of light through the wing leadership and to my desk to handle. I was on the fence about taking a stripe, settled on LOR with control roster though. Probably didn't warrant Art 15 and I wasn't convinced it was winnable if he declined the Art 15. Guy came close to ruining his career because he thought it was a good idea to blow hard on Facebook, it was unbelievable.

Sure, it's a broad term. To me the difference is that a forum, for guns, motorcycles, military flying, sailboats, or whatever, exists to facilitate the exchange of opinions and ideas. They're generally somewhat anonymous and have no audience outside of those who deliberately seek it out. Facebook, Twitter, insta, etc are all broadcast platforms. I don't recall ever seeing a discussion of any real value occur on any of those platforms. It's the teens posting selfies like you said, and the boomers sharing stupid shit, and the too common "old man yells at cloud." Man I hadn't thought about the political discussion side of studentpilot.net in a while, that was rowdy.

This is social media? I was reading and having discussions with others back on the studentpilot.net forums many years before Facebook was a thing. People interact on forums because of the exchange of ideas. Weird that you'd even be here commenting while not knowing what social media is.

The first amendment doesn't protect one from consequences. You're welcome to put anything you'd like on your Facebook page, but there's nothing saying you won't face consequences from doing so. I think the "government monitoring" ship sailed back with the passage of the Patriot Act (a misnomer if there ever was one). To me the real questions is why people type out their beliefs on social media anyway. Literally zero people care that someone is against kids in cages or that someone thinks the Covid vaccine is dangerous. Edited to add: the Venn diagram of people who propagate/believe the Big Lie and those who hold extremist views is nearly a circle, and they're rarely shy about showing it online, so that makes this an easier endeavor.

Anything from the right-wing terrorist Boogaloo clowns would qualify. Like the Air Force NCO from Travis who murdered two law enforcement officers a week apart. What laws do you think this runs afoul of?

I don't know a single pilot that stayed in, took another assignment, took the bonus etc. because of the pandemic. Maybe five guys in my squadron retired or separated during the pandemic, all are gainfully and happily employed now, to include those who wanted airline work. UPS and FedEx never slowed down. Maybe it was different in the heavy world, but in the fighter world, the pandemic did virtually nothing for retention. Anyone who stuck around because of it was likely a tire-kicker and not ever serious about getting out anyway.

The way it's worded makes this fact somewhat ambiguous: this was his first ever attempt at AAR. And it was at night. One of just many ways his entire chain of command let him down that night.